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An artist like lloward Arkley leaves a complex legacy made up of various elements, all indelibly marked by the myths and memories associated with his art and life. 1 Arklcy 's exhibited and commissioned oeuvre is obviously central to his legacy, but significant too are perceptions of the nature and extent of his artistic achievement, matters on which as we have seen already- opinions vary (art-historians use the evocative term fortuna to describe the vagaries of artists' postmortem reputations).2 The more thoughtful and substantial views developed after an artist's death also usually involve consideration of another significant element: the assortment of unfinished works, notes and first drafts, sketches, unrealised projects, correspondence, and reference material, sometimes referred to by cultural historians with the German word Nachlass (meaning 'estate' , or literally ' that which is left behind ' ). Arkley's legacy, following his sudden death in July 1999 at the summit of his career, includes an extensive corpus of this type, comprising notebooks, references and 'source material ' collected insatiably over many years. Hints as to the nature of this collection emerged during Arkley's lifetime, especially at the time of the exhibition of his 'Casual Works: Working Drawings, Source Material , Doodles, 1974-1987', which was mounted at 200 Gertrude Street in 1988, and which led to the acquisition for public collections of several panels of images from comics, children 's books and magazines, together with related working drawings.3 However, these examples constitute only a fraction of a much larger body of material. Now that its full scope is becoming apparent, Arkley 's studio material is revealed as extensive and thought-provoking, indicating a range and depth which may surprise those seduced by... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline